MODERN APPROACHES TO NATURAL FIRE MONITORING AND FORECASTING: REVIEW AND CONCEPT OF AUTONOMOUS UAV-BASED SYSTEM
Abstract
Natural fires cause serious damage to ecosystems, the economy, and public safety every year, and timely detection of fires and prediction of their development increases the speed of response to threats and allows for optimal allocation of resources during emergency response. Existing monitoring methods are limited by the speed of detecting fire outbreaks and the speed of their further spread, which reduces the effectiveness of rescue services. To solve this problem, heterogeneous data sources can be used, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), distributed sensor networks, mobile field observation systems, ground-based thermal imaging stations, etc., which can contribute to a more accurate analysis of the current situation and improve the reliability of predictive models of fire spread. The aim of the study was to develop a concept for an automated approach to monitoring and predicting wildfires based on unmanned aerial vehicles. We believe that this approach will improve the speed of detecting fire outbreaks and the accuracy of predicting their spread. The tasks include analyzing existing monitoring methods, developing a concept for a system that integrates multispectral imaging, optimized data transmission, automatic segmentation, and forecasting based on machine learning, as well as ensuring interaction between the operator and alert specialists. The work used methods of collecting, analyzing, and transmitting data from UAVs, processing multispectral images, machine learning and neural networks for fire detection, image segmentation algorithms and simulation modeling for fire spread prediction, data visualization to support decision-making by operators and administrators, logging and analysis of results for model training, software engineering, and human-computer interaction technologies. The system will reduce the time required to detect and predict fires, enable operators to launch multiple drones simultaneously, and automate the processing of data received from them. Process automation will reduce emergency response times and staffing levels, improve resource allocation, increase forecast accuracy, and improve the timeliness of emergency service notifications. This will help reduce damage from wildfires and improve the safety of people and ecosystems. Despite the progress made in addressing this challenge, the comprehensive system described in this article does not yet exist in its entirety in Russia, the CIS countries, or in Western and Asian countries. Although individual components, such as UAVs for monitoring and artificial intelligence (AI) for data analysis, are already in active use, there is currently no integrated solution that combines all elements (drone control, near real-time fire spread prediction, data transmission, and interaction with emergency services). does not currently exist. This concept represents a new approach that could become a breakthrough technology for combating natural disasters.
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